King Kauto's regal show: Spectacle fit for the Queen as Denman adds to Star quality

As respectably as the Queen's horse, the humbly named Barbers Shop, ran, the real regal performances in a truly memorable Cheltenham Gold Cup were produced by the monarch who regained his crown and the ruler who lost his but could next year reclaim it.

Take a bow, take several bows in fact and give us an encore, worthy champion Kauto Star and deposed Denman, the twin jewels of jump racing.

A Gold Cup watched in person by the Queen for only the second time in her reign did not provide a close finish.

Thirteen lengths in the cold calculation of winning distances represents a bit of a pasting.

But noses and short heads are ten a penny on the dirt of Lingfield or mud at Towcester.

This was a special race judged by the standards of any era because of the identity of the principals and their troubled path to the return duel that everyone had hoped for but no one expected, especially those most involved with Denman.

Who says that champions don't come back? They both did.

Kauto, ridden by Ruby Walsh, the human star of the week with an astonishing seven successes, became the first in history to regain his title, while Denman, who suffered from a heart condition last year, came back not exactly from the dead but from some serious inertia.

Which was why, amid the obvious euphoria of victory, with Pony Club daughter Megan helping herself to a celebratory leg up on daddy Paul Nicholls, the triumphant trainer's first public thoughts were for the vanquished.

Kauto Star and Denman made it a memorable Cheltenham Gold Cup

'Didn't Denman run well?' Nicholls, who, of course, again trained the first and second, said to anyone proffering a handshake. And there were many.

'Absolutely brilliant. Where's Paul? Where's Paul?' He was seeking Paul Barber, his landlord at Ditcheat and co-owner of Denman with professional gambler Harry Findlay.

Some congratulations for the defeated were in order. There was no need for commiserations.

Nicholls later revealed that jockey Sam Thomas had been so shocked by how poorly Denman schooled two weeks ago that serious thought had been given to pulling the horse out of the race.

'We were going to draw stumps there and then,' said Nicholls.

But Denman's recovery in the past fortnight and display of wellbeing over three miles, two furlongs and 110 yards of galloping and jumping, down dale but most testingly up hill, brought a warrior cry from Findlay.

'Denman has run an absolutely monster race,' he said. 'He will be back to take on Kauto next year in the Battle of Britain III. And we can beat Kauto next time. If there was some pace on the race, we would even be favourite.'

The race turned into very much the duel the public had been denied in 2008 when Denman, like a tank at the front of a column, powered a long way from home into a lead that Kauto Star and the lesser mortals never looked like closing. There was almost an anticlimax.

The stablemates, indeed neighbours in adjoining boxes, stayed too far apart for any true sense of drama. It was different 12 months on.

For much of the race and certainly most of the second circuit, Kauto Star and Denman raced side by side, matching stride for stride and jump for jump, always prominent, always the ones most likely to be involved at the death.

The professional punters and race watchers would have called the ultimate result very early in proceedings with the pace not strong, Kauto Star moving sweetly and Denman being ridden with understandable restraint.

That was Sam's orders,' said Nicholls later. 'The way the prep has gone with him, he was only going to finish if he was ridden sensibly. Last year was a one-off blitz and it got to the bottom of him. I don't want to see that happen to him again.'

The general public, those not too affected by their pockets and/or their desire for a royal winner, were just delighted to watch the two protagonists slug it out as if the rest in a bar-room brawl had thrown their best and their last punches.

If much of the focus beforehand had been on the presence of The Queen in the packed paddock, chatting with her trainer and jockey like all the other owners, it had switched during the race to the progress of the No 8 and No 5.

'Not you, I don't believe it,' Walsh said to Thomas as Denman took an even snugger position alongside the leader as the contest entered the final stages.

Kauto Star, reputedly a dodgy jumper in the past, soared over the third last fence with a mighty leap and was booted clear by Walsh in what turned out to be the decisive move.

Denman, brave to the end, could not respond other than to protect the runner-up place and think of another day.

Everyone in racing will be thinking of another day, a year from now, and the next episode in an increasingly compelling sporting story.

But very properly Kauto Star assumed centre stage in the winner's circle.

'He is a one-in-a-million horse for any jockey and I am just lucky to be riding him,' said Walsh, a one-in-a-million jockey, not just judging by his record-breaking performance this week, and Kauto Star is pretty lucky to have him on his back.

He cannot speak, of course, so a lone voice, presumably one with a winning betting slip, spoke for him. 'Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby,' he chanted to the mirth of the assembled company.

By then Her Majesty had slipped quietly away. But if the third Battle of Britain materialises next year, she may return and not only if her horse does.